


Once Upon an After the War

by tin_girl



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, M/M, Not Epilogue Compliant, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 11:43:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20581946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tin_girl/pseuds/tin_girl
Summary: Where did you get all that love, as if Harry cut some innocent creature’s vein and sucked its blood before he could have anything good to give.“Where did you get yours from?” he said, and the way Draco looked at him, it was like Harry finally took his hand, eight years late but Draco still holding it out to him over time and space, over war and death, over tears and over blood.Or, Harry tries to explain.





	Once Upon an After the War

**Author's Note:**

> This probably lacks clarity, I'm sorry, I tried

Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? Proving nature’s law is wrong it learned to walk with out having feet.

~~The Rose That Grew from Concrete, Tupac Shakur

*

"Let me tell you a story,” Harry says, and across the table, Ron stares at him like Harry’s lost his mind. “Once upon a time, there was a cramped shop full of robes and scarves, and inside a boy was being fitted, a pin pricking at the back of his neck.”

The boy was a nobody with an embarrassing scar on his forehead, who could still taste a crushed birthday cake from weeks before, and who could remember someone singing a lullaby to him, once. Harry, eleven years old, unformed dough, glasses crooked and unmatched socks.

There was another boy next to him, who started with ‘hullo’ and then wouldn’t stop. Dudley, Harry thought, even though the boy wasn’t – even though the boy looked like a spill of milk and too many bird bones.

“He had all those _opinions_,” Harry says, talking with his hands. “He had all those opinions, only it took me months –years, rather – to realize they weren’t his own.”

“Yes, they _were_—” Ron argues, face so red that Harry can’t see his freckles.

“If someone shoved something down your throat—”

“If someone shoved something down my throat, I wouldn’t have to bloody lick my lips after!”

“Once upon a time,” Harry says, tea cooling in his hands, “there was a boy bleeding out on a bathroom floor.”

“_No_,” Ron chokes out, violent, and someone glances their way in the dim café. Attention is like a half-tamed animal, always at Harry’s heels, following sounds, following smells, and stray hair forever clinging to his coat. 

“Have you ever seen,” Harry asks, trying not to laugh, “blood on snow?”

Harry’s sixteen again, something sticky on his hands, something warm on his hands, something red on his hands, colour staining Malfoy’s milk, and he remembers Hermione talking of roses and Alice in Wonderland, of painting and loss of innocence.

He wishes it were paint.

“I saw a Boggart once, after, and it was him, bleeding.”

Ron pushes his fingers into his hair, and Harry remembers all their handshakes, all the times they—

“Once upon a time, there was a boy about to burn alive.”

Once upon a time, there was a boy about to burn, and I couldn’t stand the thought of red eating him again. He was already chewed, spit out, mangled, and I couldn’t stand it.

“Once upon a time, he said, it’s not him, and once upon a time, once upon a winter, once upon a Christmas, he said, hullo, and I thought that we could start all over.”

Ron stares at him, and Harry thinks that maybe this is it, maybe it’s alright now--

“Harry, he didn’t say ‘it’s not him.’ Don’t you remember? He said ‘I can’t be sure,’ and he said ‘I don’t know’.”

Harry remembers his swollen face and Draco looking at him and looking at him and looking at him, and how a forever had passed but still Draco wouldn’t say anything. He doesn’t know how to explain that those seconds of Draco’s hesitation stretch into a 'no' in his head, that in that moment of quiet, before Draco started stammering, the six years they had behind them all changed, knots undone, a mess of loose strings and what to do with them?

“Even then,” he starts, hopeless, fingers shaking, shaking. “That was the first time that I thought it, that we could start all over—"

“Some things,” Ron says, coffee-bitter and crust-dry, “are better left as they are.”

“He told me I had toothpaste in my hair,” Harry tries to explain, tired already, his tea gone cold and the sun outside burning itself out into a quiet purple.

“Tell me a different story,” Ron asks, and tilts his head back, lets his arms fall loose. “I don’t like this one.”

“Once upon a time,” Harry starts dutifully. “There was a girl.”

Ron smiles, tired, and Harry downs his tea, Slytherin-green and mean on his tongue like snow three weeks before, when it all first started.

“Sometimes, the girl would absent-mindedly scratch at her wrist,” Harry says, dragging his fingernails over the pale skin where it spells, I must not tell lies. “Like this.”

Ron puts away his cup, so hard that the tea spills.

“The girl was smart, and always knew that everybody’s blood was red. Maybe that’s why when her friend told her he fell in love, she smiled.”

“She _cried_.”

“She smiled through tears.”

“She bloody _cried_, Harry—”

“He was crying that day, yes, crying, crying, crying, and Ron, it felt like I had his soul in my hand, and it was ugly, and I didn’t want it, but I _had_ it, and sometimes I still feel it weighing in my palm—”

“All this, it didn’t mean anything,” Ron argues over him, and they’re so close, their knees knocking together under the small table, candlewax dripping between them, but it feels like forever, like mountains, like oceans. “It didn’t mean anything, you’re only adding all the meanings now—”

“It was the only thing that meant something!” Harry says, yells, and they’ll be asked to leave, but he doesn’t care, because sometimes he remembers the shape of _Sectumsempra_ in his mouth, and can’t cough it out no matter how hard he tries. He doesn’t care, because sometimes he wakes up swallowing tears that he thinks aren’t his own. He doesn’t care, because years after, Draco said ‘hullo’ to him again, and Harry could have sworn that he felt a prick of a pin at the back of his neck.

Once upon a time, Draco looking up, _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_ in hand. Hullo, only voice broke open, nose still pointy but not as high up, I think you have toothpaste in your hair.

“What’s your favourite one?” Harry asked, awkward, pointing to the book, and trying to wordlessly spell the toothpaste away. Draco looked down at the book and stared, but like he wasn’t seeing. He seemed half-absent, like some of him sloshed and spilled somewhere back in time, and when he answered, he sounded subdued, as if the war stole all his noise away.

“I like The Snow Queen,” he said, distracted, and Harry thought, but that’s muggle, and Harry thought, but that’s so lonely.

“I like The Snow Queen,” Draco repeated, a little louder, “only I don’t think Gerda ever existed.”

“But,” Harry stammered, the world like a puzzle set spilled all over, “The Snow Queen is all about Gerda.”

“No,” Draco said, and smiled sadly, like something was ending. “It’s all about the cold.”

Later, he called Harry ‘Potter’, and mocked his hair, and raised his eyebrow, and rolled his eyes, and waved his hand, dismissive, but it was already too late, Harry had already seen all the broken china of him and couldn’t look away from the pieces.

Outside, after Draco left, the book gift-wrapped for someone, Harry swallowed snow as it fell around him, and wondered if it would wash them clean and cover up all the red they bled out on each other over the years.

“And then what, you bumped into him again?” Ron says, doubtful, and Harry nods, because he did, and then shakes his head, because even though he doesn’t know how, he’s sure that he found Draco, that it was all intent.

January still young, Draco on snow, easy to miss but for Blishen’s Firewhisky in his hand, fingers blushed pink from cold curled around the bottle’s neck.

“I’m making a snow angel,” he said, dragging his arms up and down, alcohol spilling. “It was a sky angel, but it fell.”

Harry cast warming spells and wrapped his scarf around Draco’s neck. Draco, curious, peered at him and opened his mouth around the beginning of some question. Harry waited, and waited, and waited, and then, where did you get all that love?

Where did you get all that love, and Harry didn’t understand.

“Vol— Tom Rid— _him_,” Draco stammered, and his nose looked like it would fall off. “You should have grown up to be him. I’ve _heard_. About your muggle family, and how nobody loved you, and if nobody loved you, where did you get all that love of yours?”

Harry understood. Where did you get all that love, as if Harry cut some innocent creature’s vein and sucked its blood before he could have anything good to give.

“Where did you get yours from?” he said, and the way Draco looked at him, it was like Harry finally took his hand, eight years late but Draco still holding it out to him over time and space, over war and death, over tears and over blood.

If they really held hands, Harry was sure, Draco’s fingers would twitch, recoiling, because he looked like he no longer believed in good things.

“My mother loved me,” Draco said, only how could it be enough, that cold love in that cold house in that cold, cold world?

“Mine loved me, too,” Harry said, only how could it be enough, when she died before he could remember?

“Sometimes, my skin is hungry,” Draco whispered, and meant it in some sad, desperate way Harry didn’t understand, but Harry’s very bones sang all the same.

Draco looked like he forgot everything good, and because Harry did, too, he had this ridiculous thought – a pathetic whimsy – that maybe they could remember together. Later, Draco kept the scarf and Harry kept the bottle. When he put his mouth to the rim, the glass was still warm.

“Have you read The Snow Queen?” Harry asks, now.

“The what?”

“Ron, I might love him,” Harry says, and it doesn’t feel like jumping. It feels like landing.

Ron stares at Harry, that stupid scented candle between them, and Harry thinks that time is layers.

“Since when?” Ron asks, and Harry thinks that time is circles. He thinks, hullo, he thinks, I can't be sure, he thinks—

First months after the war, and Harry was a tabula rasa of a sort, rejecting invitations to galas, never combing his hair – what else is new? – ordering takeout and not bothering to throw away the boxes. Not bothering to eat the food, half the time. Sometime in the middle of that, Hermione bumped into Draco – because she bumped into him first – and they talked about house elves.

“She told me three days ago,” Harry says now. “Right after I told her about him.”

It was October, and raining, and Draco said, hello, Gr—.

“That’s what got me,” Hermione said, recounting it to Harry. “That ‘Gr’ that he never finished.”

It was raining, but they talked anyway, right there, in the middle of the street, how are you, how’s your mother been?

“It’s not that I don’t think house elves should be free,” Draco said, and Harry can imagine it, his quiet, quiet voice, almost drowned out by the rain and by passerby steps. “It’s that they don’t want to be. I can understand wanting to be loyal to someone, loving them, and – never knowing anything else – feeling happy, even, and—”

“Yes, yes, but,” Hermione argued, almost taking his eye out with the tip of her umbrella, “shouldn’t they know something else, and then have a choice? Shouldn’t they know, first?”

After that, they would meet for tea sometimes, because Draco had told her – shyly, like he expected her to laugh – that he thought so, too.

“He thought so, too,” Harry says, and Ron rolls his eyes, missing the point.

“The third time I saw him, he was tearing thorns off his mother’s roses,” Harry goes on, and remembers walking towards Malfoy Manor, and how it loomed, always huge but never getting bigger. Draco with pricked fingers in the garden, licking blood off his thumb, and the roses were charmed to bloom in winter, but he wouldn’t charm the thorns off.

“I want to give them to her,” he said, defensive, looking down at his knuckles, wind-chapped and cold-bit. “I don’t want her to hurt herself.”

“Why pick them at all?” Harry said, and Draco laughed, some hysteria in it.

“Don’t you know all roses get picked?” he said, and then shook his head. “She won’t leave the house, that’s why.”

“I came for tea,” Harry mumbled, awkward, and Draco raised his eyebrow.

“Presumptuous,” he said, and Harry remembered how cold his skin had been in that bathroom years before, how warm his blood. How, later, it was under his fingernails and wouldn’t be charmed away, wouldn’t be washed away no matter how hard Harry scrubbed, and how he would bite his nails just to get the flakes out. How he would pretend that he couldn’t taste the rust of it.

Ron, it all started when I saw him cry, and felt my own cheeks sting from nothing.

“I still don’t get why, Harry! It was the war, everybody had it hard, everybody bled, everybody cried—”

“I was never a person,” Harry says, trying to be patient, trying to ignore the sun, long gone. “I was only a means to an end, and when there was no more purpose, I was supposed to be someone but wasn’t.”

“Now, mate, you like Quidditch, and you wanted to be an Auror—”

“I didn’t,” Harry says, because he didn’t. “I just didn’t want my purpose to end.”

“What does Malfoy have to do with all that?”

And Harry doesn’t know how to explain it, so he thinks of that poem about roses and concrete.

“He might have licked his lips afterwards, but they had still shoved it all down his throat,” he says, melting in his chair. “And then, it took him years, but he ended up throwing it all up.”

“I don’t believe that. He’s not _good_ now.”

“Well, they raised him up like they wanted and then he had to go and try to grow up—”

“So what you’re saying is that he was never a person, either.”

“Well, yes, but he is one, now—”

“He’s always been one,” Ron says, gentle now, looking at Harry with something like pity.

“Alright,” Harry says. “Alright, but—”

“Yeah?”

“But he’s still someone who cuts thorns off his mother’s roses,” Harry says, and there it is, that moment when Ron is supposed to say, he’s still someone who calls people Mudbloods, he’s still someone who has the Dark Mark on his forearm, he’s still someone who—

But Ron doesn’t say anything, maybe because he’s finally understood that what Harry’s been saying all this time is, I finally have a choice, so please let me make it, even if you don’t like it, even if it’s a wrong one.

“Well,” Ron mumbles later, after they’ve paid for the tea and left a tip to make up for all the noise, the night cold on their cheeks and the world calm for once. “Does he at least kiss decent?”

Harry tips his head back and laughs.

Once upon a time, there was a boy with a piece of the devil’s mirror in his heart and shards of it in his eyes. He might not have been good, but he bled and cried the pieces out all by himself.

Once upon an after-the-war, Harry fell in love because, somehow, painted red and through concrete, they had both grown up.

**Author's Note:**

> I hate how I erased Gerda from Snow Queen but what I meant is not that the original Kai could save himself because let's be honest, that boy was hopeless. I just meant that Draco didn't have a Gerda. I don't know man, I'm tired. This all probably doesn't make sense, anyway. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
